What Must Happen Before an Israeli–Lebanese Peace

Benjamin Franklin once warned that those who trade liberty for temporary security deserve neither. Lebanese Christians made precisely that bargain. In the name of safety, they surrendered political freedom, and in the end, they lost both.

Five minutes south of struggling Christian villages in southern Lebanon, Jews who chose freedom over submission built a thriving state. Fifteen minutes away, in Cyprus, Christians rejected submittion, asserted sovereignty, defended their identity, and secured their future. Lebanese Christians, by contrast, mistook freedom for lifestyle choices, the freedom to dress as they please or drink what they want. That is not political freedom.

The decisive mistake was made early. When Patriarch Howayek invited those who pledged allegiance to the Caliphate of Sharif Hussein to co-write Lebanon’s constitution, Christians surrendered political sovereignty in the hope of coexistence. Everything that followed flowed from that concession.

Any serious discussion of peace between Israel and Lebanon must begin with this reality: peace is impossible under the current structure of the Lebanese state.

The impossibility of coexistence

Coexistence in an Islamic-majority society is not primarily a legal question. It is a theological one.

A Muslim leader can impose a semi-secular order on a Muslim population in only two ways. The first is sustained economic prosperity, as seen in places like the UAE or Malaysia. The second is coercion, as in Egypt or Jordan. Even in these cases, what exists is tolerance, not equality.

Out of fifty-six Islamic countries, there is not a single one where non-Muslims enjoy the same rights as Muslims. This remains true even though only twenty-seven of those states formally declare Islam as the religion of the state. Where Muslims are not the majority, Nigeria or India, for example, community pressure enforces Islamic norms informally through intimidation, violence, and social control rather than constitutional law.

This pattern exists because Islam is not merely a religion. Islam contains a religion, but it also contains a political system.

A Muslim is not only a monotheist. He is also, by definition, a monocrat, someone who believes in one legitimate source of sovereignty. This belief is known as al-Hakimiyya: the doctrine that sovereignty belongs to Allah alone and that human legislation is illegitimate unless it submits to divine law.

Academics often describe al-Hakimiyya as a fringe interpretation associated with Sayyid Qutb. That is incorrect. Qutb did not invent the idea; he articulated what already existed in the Muslim political imagination. From the beginning, the Muslim population in Lebanon could not accept that land viewed as part of Dar al-Islam could be ruled by non-Muslims.

As a result, Lebanon was forced into the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arab nationalism was then used to undermine successful Christian leadership in the 1950s and 60s. Palestinian militias were imported. Civil war followed, destroying Christian political dominance. Hezbollah later completed the process, accelerating Christian emigration and cultural Islamization.

Lebanese Muslims have always sided with non-Lebanese Muslims against their Lebanese Christian fellow citizens. This is rooted in al-Hakimiyya and the doctrine of al-Wala’ wa al-Bara’. What appears as chaos is, in fact, continuity. Coexistence under these conditions is structurally impossible.

Why peace with Israel is different for Lebanon

Peace between Israel and Lebanon is fundamentally different from peace between Israel and Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, or the UAE. Those states are Muslim-ruled and capable of imposing strategic decisions regardless of public opinion. Lebanon is not a sovereign Christian state. It is a fragmented, captured entity.

Any attempt to replicate Camp David, Wadi Araba, or the Abraham Accords in Lebanon will fail for three reasons.

First, no Christian leadership can coerce a Muslim majority into genuine peace with Israel. Peace imposed without sovereignty is temporary and reversible.

Second, the rise of a Sunni Islamic regime in Syria will harden Sunni positions toward Israel. It will further radicalize the Lebanese arena rather than stabilize it.

Third, demographics matter. Christians are steadily losing political weight. Any forced peace agreement today will evolve tomorrow into a hostile arrangement under Muslim dominance.

For these reasons, peace cannot exist between Israel and the Lebanon that exists today. Peace can only exist between Israel and a Christian Lebanese political entity, one with autonomy, defined borders, and independent security authority. Without these conditions, peace is fantasy.

Security, survival, and autonomy

The Middle East is entering a new phase of instability. The Sunni–Shia conflict, sustained for fourteen centuries, is re-igniting under new conditions: a Sunni revival on one side and a weakened but desperate Shia axis on the other.

Christians in Lebanon are caught directly in the middle, geographically and politically. To the north and east stands a barbaric Sunni Islamic regime in Syria. To the south and within are Shia factions that will not relinquish power peacefully, because surrender would mean subjugation.

Christians will pay the price for this confrontation unless they remove themselves from it. Neutrality is not enough. Appeasement is suicide. The only viable path forward is autonomy.

Peace with Israel has a precondition: Lebanese Christians must first demand political autonomy. Without autonomy, peace is impossible. Christians remain hostages, and Lebanon remains a battlefield for other people’s wars.

It is too late for Lebanon to replicate the Israeli model, in which a Muslim population lives freely but cannot undermine strategic state decisions. That opportunity has passed. The only path left is Christian autonomy. Any talk of peace before that is a waste of time.

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